Colorado Sun: Former Denver Post Journalists Launch Media Venture

The Colorado news outlet is in full revolt mode after frustrated journalists publicly blasted the newspaper’s hedge fund owner. In April, the 125-year-old newspaper published an editorial calling executives at Alden Global Capital “vulture capitalists.”

Now, former Denver Post reporters and editors plan to launch a new local media outlet on, you guess it, the blockchain. The new venture, the Colorado Sun, will be launched in partnership with the Civil Media Company, a New York-based startup that aims to use blockchain technology to launch 1,000 publications nationwide by the end of the year.

The Colorado Sun intends to be “a community-supported, journalist-owned team focused on investigative, explanatory and narrative journalism for a state in the midst of a massive evolution.” It will be completely free of advertisements, according to its website.

So how will it work exactly?

The new publication will have a conventional website whose data will be written permanently into the secure, distributed digital ledger known as the blockchain. Civil Media will offer a grant to the the Colorado Sun, so it can cover its expenses. Note that Civil is backed by Consensys, a Brooklyn-based blockchain software company.

It appears that the media outlet is also raising money through crowdfunding site Kickstarter. So far, it has raised $31,317 of its $75,000 goal. Its Kickstarter page reads, “Local news is in crisis. In an era when hedge funds and billionaires are too often calling the shots, there is a new opportunity for people to help keep fact-based local news coverage alive.”

Here’s another interesting facet: As part of its plan to fund new media entities like the Colorado Sun, Civil Media plans to unveil a new token this summer called CVL. The token will hold publications in the system to a certain set of ethical and professional standards. Anyone who buys the token will be able to vote on whether one of its media sites violates the company’s journalism standards.